By Krishna Dronamraju
J. B. S. Haldane (1892-64) used to be one of many nice scientists--and nice technological know-how writers--of the 20 th century. A polymath who used to be a crucial determine within the improvement of recent evolutionary biology, he used to be additionally a hugely expert essayist and a rare character--brilliant, witty, idealistic, humorous, and pugnacious.
What I Require From Life brings jointly Haldane's renowned technology essays, greater than sixty articles that replicate not just his masterful skill to speak clinical knowing, but additionally his deep dedication to socialism. Readers will locate essays on a thrilling variety of topics--"Is There existence at the Planets?" "Is guy a Machine?" "Why are You Left-handed?" "Overcrowding on the Zoo," "How Bees Communicate," "The universal Cold."
Edited with an creation through Haldane's final graduate student, Krishna Dronamraju, this number of thought-provoking and beautifully-written items additionally comes with a Preface written through the past due Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who calls Haldane "perhaps the main tremendous technological know-how popularizer of his generation."
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Extra info for What I Require From Life: Writings on Science and Life From J.B.S. Haldane
Example text
I think ‘comrade’ is one of them. If substantives change their meaning, adjectives turn somersaults. I will only instance ‘jolly’ and ‘nice’. The Greek word ‘diabolos’ means originally one who throws through, as a good bowler throws through the batsman’s defence. Then it meant a prosecutor, including the angel who was supposed to accuse men to God. This accuser was also supposed to be a tempter, and ‘diabolos’ is the root of ‘devil’. A medieval Latin word for devilish was ‘diabolivus’. As long as Christianity was a people’s religion, the devil was regarded as an enemy.
These ideas are being transformed by materialistic thinking about history as our ancestors’ ideas were transformed by materialistic thinking about nature. The consequence will no doubt be revolutionary, as it was in the past. This would perhaps be deplorable if our society were working well. But it is working very badly. So we are probably going to have an uncomfortable time in the immediate future, whatever happens. And as I want a rational society to come out of our present troubles I am not only a materialist myself, but I do what I can to make other people materialists.
It consisted of atoms which united in particular patterns. They moved in deWnite paths under given forces, and so on. My belief in these theories was not a matter of mere docility either. I had tested them and risked my life on their substantial accuracy. Clearly, if matter had the properties attributed to it by physicists and chemists, something more was needed to account for living organisms. And it was far harder to account WHY I AM A MATERIALIST 11 for mind. As a believer in evolution I had to reject such theories as T.
